Week of July 7, 2008

The iPhone App Store: First Thoughts

Friday, July 11, 2008

The new iPhone goes on sale today, and the lower price point and massive amount of hype almost guarantees that it will sell briskly. Not getting as much attention is that the iPhone application store opened on Thursday. We took a quick look at the iPhone app store and came away with two thoughts: It's a seamless introduction to iPhone applications, with a modest selection of good software that is easy to load onto your iPhone, and it is disappointing for users of the independent installer application that had done this via the "jailbreak" process before Apple opened up their store.

Beyond simplicity, the biggest issue is that that unofficial community has created many more interesting applications than the official one. One of the absolutely must have applications for the iPhone via the development community is a theming applications. It allows a user to make the iPhone look like whatever they want. See the screenshot for an example. Theming your iPhone via the official store is still not possible. Also, the unofficial community has an actual video camera solution. Yes, you can actually record video with the iPhone-if you use the unofficial application "store," that is. I could go on, but the bottom line is that there is still a significant untapped resource of iPhone applications that, for one reason or another, aren't allowed into the iTunes application store. This is a significant shortcoming.

Recently we discussed how Apple could be heading to a similar situation as they faced in the eighties with the Macintosh: A better product but one with fewer application choices due to Apple's central control. The initial launch of the iPhone application store seems to confirm that for the time being: There is a great deal of innovation and exciting applications already developed for the iPhone... but not available to the public. If Google, Nokia, or Microsoft can tap into this disconnect, Apple may face a mobile future much like its PC past.

You Tube Ad Supported Model Not Working

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Wall Street Journal reports that the current business model for YouTube is not generating nearly as much revenue as they had projected. Even with more than a billion page views each day, Google isn't able to generate enough revenue from ads on the YouTube home page. The solution? Pre-and Post-roll ads, possibly as early as this Fall.

HD Radio Slow To Take Off

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

US Today features an article on the growth...or lack thereof...of HD Radio in the US. According to the article, instead of an estimated 1,000,000 HD radios in the marketplace, only about half that many have been sold. The article touts the improved audio quality, the wide range of formats available and iTunes tagging, but it also points out the price of the radios as a major drawback.

What's not discussed is the shear lack of urgency for consumers to purchase new radios. Even though the price has dropped considerably, how many people are going to be motivated to spend even $100 for a new radio? Aside from bundling a new type of radio into the purchase of a new car, consumers don't see the need yet, despite radio's best efforts at promoting the new technology. Radio may be fighting to remove its legacy as the world's last analog entertainment medium, but so far the audience isn't buying.

The Olympics In A New Media World

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

According to AdAge, NBC is planning an ambitious project to measure consumer behavior surrounding the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing. NBC and its associated networks will air some 1400 hours of television coverage, with their various website carrying another 2200 hours of streaming video, video on demand and mobile content.

NBC is creating a "total audience measurement index," which will aggregate viewing across all platforms. NBC wants to get as much information as possible to use for future reference in terms of how consumers consume media on each platform, with the hope of being able to use the total audience numbers to increase sales. So far, advertisers are cautious, viewing the possibility for such data as an interesting research tool, but not totally sold on the idea of making advertising buys on the aggregated numbers.

Green Not So Gold

Monday, July 7, 2008

In the U.S. and Europe there's a growing backlash against the hype of "green" marketing, according to an article in International Herald Tribune. So many businesses and brands are hyping their green credentials that consumers are becoming tired of the claims and are beginning to outright question them. The proliferation of ads that include some sort of green claim or message has mushroomed over the past year. Now, regulatory agencies are seeing big increases in consumer complaints about these claims.

Consequently, some in the environmental movement are starting to fear that exaggerated claims will turn off consumers at the very time when environmental awareness is hitting critical mass. Agencies are now urging their clients to make specific and realistic claims about their products rather than generic claims of being environmentally friendly....by the way, not tress were killed in the process of writing this post.